Dear non-soccer-fan friends…it’s a soccer post. Feel free to glaze right on over.
Final observations after watching, by conservative estimation, a boatload of soccer:
64 matches = approximately 96 hours of soccer, not including extra time
30 hours of pre-game/post-game analysis
Countless hours re-watching the good games at night when I couldn’t sleep. I know.
So, here’s the skinny on how I feel about this weird ass game:
1) I get it. I really get it. The game is passionate enough (though I think soccer fans indulge themselves in this idea to the point of looking a wee bit silly). I’m old enough to remember when my dad, father-in-law, and the generation before them lived and breathed baseball and its icons. It was their national past time, their escape from reality as they returned home from real wars and, for many of them, the one place that provided role models that could out-match any of the Ronaldo or Messi wannabes. And they didn’t have cable and YouTube – they had to actually GO to the games they were obsessed with (or at least settle for shuffling and trading stacks of baseball cards). They were no less patriotic and no less passionate about their sport than the throngs of Brazilians watching their team take one to the crotch a few nights ago.
Christine Anne Scott 